B 3.1. What is the impact of sugar-cane crops and the processing of sugar-cane into ethanol on the availability of water in Brazil?
Even though Brazil has the worlds largest amount of available water, with 14 percent of the surface waters, and the equivalent to the annual runoff in underground aquifers, the use of irrigation in agriculture (all crops) is very low (~3.3 million ha, against 227 million ha in the world). Sugar-cane crops are practically not irrigated in Brazil, except for some small areas (supplementary irrigation), and this is an enormous advantage over other regions of the world. As a result, environmental problems with water quality arising out of irrigation (dragging of nutrients and agrochemicals, erosion) and industrial use occur considerably less frequently than they do in other parts of the world. In this regard, Embrapa rates sugar-cane as Level 1 (no impact on water quality). In the ethanol and sugar industry, the water collection and release levels have been substantially decreased over the past few years, from around 5 m3/ton of sugar-cane worth of collected water (in 1990 and 1997) to 1.8
